


Justified in Theory & Darwinian in Approach

by Potterology



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FINALE, Gen, Spoilers for finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-04-05 11:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potterology/pseuds/Potterology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-finale; a lead into season four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Principle Theory and Formulation of Hypotheses

You hate funerals. Drab, morbid affairs with everyone crumbling together and weeping into delicate handkerchiefs in the rain - and it’s always raining, even in the middle of June. You forgot an umbrella, but it’s too fine to soak through your coat and your cigarette hasn’t extinguished yet, thank God; the Father has been staring at you for the better part of twenty minutes, though whether it’s because you’re the only person here or because of the smoking, you cannot be sure. He asks if you would like to say anything. About a woman you hardly knew, hadn’t spoken to in years? Shake your head no. You both cross yourselves as he nods to the diggers, the slow slug of their shovels made worse by the sodding rain.

 _Delphine Cormier_.  _La voie d_ _es_ _justes homme est_ _as_ _sai_ _llie d_ _e toutes parts par les inéquités de l'égoïste et la tyrannie des hommes mauvais._ _1984-2015._  

It’s a sad, small granite headstone with no endearments to cheapen it; the stone is smooth and the plot was expensive, set under a cherry tree you think is particularly tasteful. You brought flowers but they are wilting under the building downpour and keep catching on the odd shovel of dirt. 

How long had you expected this call? Vaguely, you remember pulling her out of a bathtub a thousand years ago, how blood had stained your pristine uniform in wide snowflake patterns, the way ink used to when you still wrote on the back of your hand. The picture had been clearer back then. She called it the science of survival and stopped going to Mass and confession, started smoking (and of course, you started with her, because you were friends and you were afraid), threw herself into the academia of things rather than the blind faith of the nuns and the father. You know from an old photograph her parents are buried not too far from here, on the west bank of the Mourning Path, and wonder if perhaps you should take a jaunt over and say hello, in lieu of their daughter who cannot. Decide against it right as your phone blares off in your pocket. 

 _Have they no respect?_ Your cigarette is burning down low, so with a final puff, you flick it into the grave and sniff at the harsh, twin looks from the gravediggers. Fuck off. 

‘ _Bonjour?_ ’ is the only word you say down the phone, listening carefully. Delphine was an idiot. Should have stayed in France, though there’s something to be said for them allowing her the dignity of returning to Paris, of letting you be the one to make the arrangements; how you wound up being named as her next of kin, you don’t know, but you’re happy to do it. Happy to call the victors of the spoils named in her will - _Cosima Niehaus, congratulations, you’ve just inherited a rather sizeable chunk of change and a flashy downtown apartment_ \- and do what needs to be done. Happy to if only because there is no one else and maybe you owe Delphine this much. 

You leave slowly, let the cold Parisian rain trickle down your collar, down your spine, chilling to the bone. This should be cathartic, but it’s not. It’s just sad. 

The car is warm. You left it running, hadn’t expecting such a lengthy service. Lighting another cigarette, you inhale deeply and tilt your head to look at the woman in the backseat. She said her name was Marion, on the phone, Delphine’s lawyer and a friend, but you know that’s not true. You’ve worked for Interpol too long to believe this kind of bullshit. 

‘Well?’ she asks, in a cool tone that sends a deep shiver down your insides. 

 _‘C’est fait._ ’ You attempt to make your answer somewhat icier, but it just comes out defeated and interrupted. You never expected to be on this end of the deal. Never expected it to be Delphine on the hill. ‘We are - _even_ , now?’ Your English is sloppy and foreign in your mouth, ugly in a way your native language is not. The woman, Marion, laughs and it’s too high and too loud in the small car. She opens the door and rain spatters back on your face and down your neck. 

 ‘Not even close, _chérie_. I’ll be in touch.’ 

And just like that she’s gone. She’s gone and you’ve got phone calls to make. 


	2. Observation in Fugue State

You end up having to go to Canada. 

The food on the plane is shit, they stop you at customs in London twice because of the gun but once you explain - French, Interpol, not on an investigation but _regulations, et cetera_ \- they wave you through with a wink and a pat on the back as if you haven’t already nearly missed your flight. Nine hours later, you touchdown and smoke three cigarettes in a row, until your hands shake from the nicotine rush and your lungs burn uncomfortably. There’s a driver waiting for you. Perks to the job, you suppose. You slide into the odd, antiseptic car and watch Toronto disappear behind you, the downtown lights and the upper city restaurants coming to life just as your body reminds you of the exhausting time difference and you don’t resist lighting up again, much to the driver’s apparent annoyance. Not your fault anymore, Delphine’s dead, you can absolutely blame her for the habit. Not as if she’s around to defend herself. 

You’re dropped outside an expensive apartment block - there’s still crime scene tape twirling around in the ether - and you are not helped with your bags. The briefcase holds all the documents required of a next of kin and who you’re here to meet with, and all that’s in your checked bag is suits, a pair of old jeans and a couple of shirts. The concierge is suspicious but you’re too tired to argue, slumping in the elevator when you get the chance. 

At first, you mistake the place for a rent-a-room penthouse, like a hotel or a cabin, just a place to put you up while your in town - it is, undeniably, a company owned flat; but they haven’t been by yet, for some bizarre reason, to sweep away the existence of it’s former occupant. There is an iPod still connected to the stereo in the living room. _La Vie En Rose_ is at the 1:32 mark. You press play. There’s nice wine in the fridge but you don’t open a bottle; there’s food in there too, though most of it is rotten, and you resort to eating the truffles on the counter. They’re stale but still good.

There’s a box under the bed full of photographs, some of them you’re even in, on the back in sloppy writing ‘Jacq & Del, 1996’. You look happy. There’s a dog in the photo you don’t remember owning. Clothes shoved to the back of the wardrobe remind you of Paris and the ones hung up, precise corners and ironed in creases, make you think of the nuns in school. 

 _Is this who you were, then, in the end?_ you think but don’t say. 

You’re too tired for this. Can’t spend so much time reconciling the girl you knew with the woman you buried, it’s too jarring and there’s too much of a disconnect; tomorrow you have to meet with her -- what? Friend? Not judging by the smug look on Marion’s face when she handed over the files or the quick research you’ve done -- and hand over the keys to this place, have to help box up all the leftover shit, have to make sure she signs the deeds to the house in Saint-Germain and the flat in Paris proper, and the car downstairs, too. After another cigarette - your last French one before you have to start buying Marlboro - you sleep in your suit. On the couch, not the bed. Delphine left a watch on the nightstand. You pocket it. 

Should’ve slept in the bed. You’re late, too, so you leave in the clothes you slept in, the keys hastily shoved in the briefcase, and use the car in the garage - there’s a bloodstain. You try not to look but there’s just no getting away from it, and the sleek BMW smells like the same rosewater perfume Delphine has worn since she was seventeen and fucking the choir boys behind the altar at St. Mary’s, and now the roses and the blood are blooming behind your vision, and suddenly you’re fifteen again and covered in red bathwater. 

You aren’t quite out of the garage before you shove the car in park, crack the driver’s door and vomit out the side. 

Cosima is polite, constrained. Hide’s behind the massive grate door with a screwdriver stuck in a hinge. You introduce yourself. 

‘ _Bonjour_ \- Jacqueline Lécuyer. We spoke on the phone.’ You’re hyper aware of how accented your English is, how heavy on your tongue it sits and even the two days between Marion in your car and now hasn’t softened your shit. You say _enchantée_ and it makes her flinch. The man with her - lithe and obviously gay - watches you closely, eyes the rumpled suit and the smell of sick clinging to you, and the jittery hands from lack of nicotine because you didn’t have time to stop, and seems unimpressed. You swear you’re a professional. It’s been a weird week. 

‘Most of this is -- _formality_. Delphine - her lawyer sent me the documents by accident, they should have come to you, but -- next of kin is a priority. Her will is clear, though. Left everything to you,’ you say, spreading out the documents.

‘Wait, she what?’ comes the stuttered reply, eyes wide as they scan over what you’ve laid in front of her. ‘I didn’t -- I had no idea she even owned any of this.’

It’s an arduous process and by the end of it, Cosima Niehaus is a few hundred grand richer and officially on the Parisian property market. You stand, shake hands, your legs stiff from the two hours sat hunched over the coffee table, but she doesn’t let you go. Only then - forced to really take her in as she keeps solid eye contact - do you notice the sunken hollow of her cheeks, the blotchy redness around her eyes, the heavy oxygen tank that’s been propped next to the couch and the cannula draped over the side. Delphine was a doctor, an immunologist. You’re getting the feeling this was more than a little personal. 

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ you say, and it sounds oddly like it’s come from someone else, a different person, and though you have said these words a thousand times to a thousand people in a thousand different countries, it feels _genuine_ here. You are sorry. Really, truly sorry. A poor excuse for a funeral, a priest’s blessing and long time coming trip to Paris was a shit testament to a life so well lived, so hard fought for. 

‘Did you know her?’ Felix asks, hovering at the back of the couch, delicate fingertips tracing his own jaw out of nervous curiosity. You let go of Cosima’s hand and nod. 

‘Since I was twelve. We were in boarding school together. Haven’t spoken in years - the natural way of things, I suppose - I went to the _Police Nationale_ and she to graduate school and we lost touch. A shame.’ Once again, you are left wincing at how uncomfortable you feel, your skin crawling with that investigative itch because something just doesn’t sit _quite right_ \- there’s nothing here, though, and you think that if you can just get through this conversation, this weekend, then maybe you can make it back home and that god-awful woman will leave you be. Marion Bowles. You want another cigarette. Something stronger, something decidedly brown in form and bloodstream injected. Have to shake your head to free the longing crawling under your skin.

‘You’re in the French police?’ Cosima, now, brow knitting into a frown that seems decidedly more interested than it should be.

‘I was. Interpol, now, though.’ You want to leave, desperately want to leave before you hear something that might make you stay. _Get her to sign the paperwork, get lost and get home._

‘So, you never spoke to Delphine before--’ _before she was gunned down in her apartment building garage?_  

‘Non -- no, not at all,’ you lie, but it’s not really a lie. A vague, two-a.m conversation after a six year absence is hardly anything to report to the newspapers about; nothing to stress a grieving partner over. You shrug on your coat and shake Felix’s hand, studiously ignore the look he gives the woman, ducking just past the door and you’re nearly there, nearly out of _Dodge_ , as the Americans say, when his high voice pierces the air with precisely what you didn’t want to hear. 

‘She was murdered, you know.’ Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Just keep walking. Keep walking, put one foot in front of the other, just keep going and you can keep your head above water. 

But of course you don’t. 

The sigh you can’t keep in sounds too much like _relax, Jacq, it’s just a cigarette_ and _I don’t really want to die_ and _I don’t think there is a God_ and _Rémy is a friend, cover for me_ and _I’ve been accepted to study immunology_ and _my mother is dead_. But more than that, it sounds like the angry huff of self-hatred at being given the run around by that corporate whacko who had you bury a friend and told you nothing. You know this. You know she was shot. You have been told the particulars, but it's been easy to lend it to gang violence or something similar. Except it's not. You turn slowly, a frown cutting into your forehead. Two days. All you needed was two days. 

‘Tell me everything.’

 


	3. Reasonable Doubt Within Parameters Set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been reading; this has been a pretty interesting experiment for me, as a lead into what I would hope for from season four, in regards to the investigation into Delphine's death. I might write a follow up because someone suggested a look at Cosima's reaction to finding out who Delphine was back then and Jacq finding out who she became - sort of a two sides of the coin thing. So that's definitely intriguing to me, so watch this space for that. Anyway, this got way long, so here's the last part!

No witnesses, no security cameras, not even a bullet - apparently, the shooter took the time to dig it out. 

On the freeway, cars rocket past, the whip-whoosh of trucks and sedans screaming by and ruffling the ash at the end of your cigarette, your borrowed BMW haphazardly jammed into a give-way. You are lucky the wing mirror hasn’t been taken off. About you is the dead stretch of October-sharp corn, a vast field of nothing but stalk and tundra, and it’s raining in Paris and snowing in Toronto, the entire world framed in a deep freeze, but somehow this slice of Montreal has been forgotten. You can’t remember why you drove all the way up here. There were too many voices and too many facts tumbling around your too-sober brain to split your difference between the investigation and the drive, so you choose a smoke and a lungful of fresh air ( _breathing_ reminds you of a hacking cough and the low whistle of an oxygen tank; dying people are so fucking depressing, this one made worse by grief). 

You can’t picture Delphine murdered. 

Cannot picture the awkward angle you know dead bodies often wind up in moulded by her own shape; you cannot picture bright, intelligent eyes blank and wide open; you cannot picture the after effects of death on her, so elegant and grinning as you remember, the piss-stained business attire. It’s what happens when you die. Unavoidable fact - part of why crime scenes stink so damned much. The bowels open, the body’s muscles relaxing. Swallowing a mouthful of bile, you flick your dead end into the corn. You hear the fizzle as you step back to the car. Murdered. Shit. 

 _She was working for DYAD, pretty shady genetic testing labs, I guess_. Yes, you knew that, had even seen a file or two on them in your tenure. _I think she must have come across a file or result she shouldn’t and those people eliminated her_.

 You aren’t stupid. There is something else, specific even, and you have a good idea of who it might concern; Cosima is holding her cards very close to her chest, and even if you wanted to help - which you do not - the bare threads of information you have are hardly anything to build a case on. It’s all so bare, so inconsequential. Delphine, and her demise, is smoke and you cannot trap it. Still, you only notice you were dialling when the tone cuts off and a voice answers. You don’t mince your words, ‘You said to call if there were any developments.’ On the other end a voice spikes, but that’s not your concern; Marion chuckles in a way you don’t like and replies with a tone that brings the word _insidious_ to mind. 

‘ _Alors?_ ’ Well? 

‘ _Il ya eu des développement_.’ It’s rude, perhaps, but fuck her. ‘Why did you drag me out here, Marion? I buried her, didn’t I? You said all I had to do was attend that piss-ant funeral and I was done - is it true? Why she was murdered?’ 

There is a long pause on the other end; if she were the type, you might imagine her worrying at a bottom lip with her teeth, a hesitant glance to whoever else might be in the room with her, a frown knitting the space between her eyes perhaps. You wait. You’re a patient person. The corner of your thumb stings where you bite into it too hard. 

‘ _Yes_.’ 

‘Why me?’ 

‘ _Why not you?_ ’ 

‘Fuck off.’ 

‘ _They need you. Your resources._ ’ 

‘My resources don’t mean shit if I don’t know what’s going on. They’re lying to me. You’re lying to me. If you brought me here to investigate, to dig, then I need the big picture, not just the pieces you want me to see.’ 

‘ _I’ll make a call. Keep your light on. Bonne nuit_.’

She hangs up. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This isn’t what you want, this isn’t you, you aren’t some gung-ho big shot cop, you’re a desk jockey, and even if you were the best fucking cop in the world, you’ve got your own cases, your own shit to deal with and how can you solve a murder in two days? _Fuck_. 

You have to smoke another cigarette before you drive back to Toronto. 

Almost stop to pick up vodka and remember the fancy, expensive wine sitting in Delphine’s fridge. Drinking a dead woman’s booze, in a dead woman’s flat, on a dead woman’s couch. The watch you pocketed last night fits oddly around your wrist - she was slim compared to yourself, the thin leather band sitting too tight around the swell of familiar bone and bend - and broken, but you wear it anyway. 

 

_Crois-tu en Dieu, Jacq?_

_Oui. Je fais._

 

‘Jesus bleeding Christ, this place is depressing,’ is what you wake up to, still half-drunk and shaking yourself from sleep. (You can still hear the choir singing, the priest giving sermon, the high echo of a myriad of quiet voices parroting back to you from the stained glass windows, and the soft shuffle of a hand up a skirt two rows back; _do you believe in God, Jacq? Yes. I do._ ) Someone chides with a harsh _Felix_ , and you can practically hear the eye roll they get in return, the thin man huffing, ‘What? Rest in peace and all that, but _look_ at this place - there’s no denying she was a chilly bitch.’ 

Pressing the heels of your hands against your eyes, a glance at the clock confirms your greeting, ‘ _Bonsoir_ , Felix. Cosima.’ They nod in return, you all shake hands. 

None of you belong. Not amongst the minimalist furniture, all sleek leather and open glass; the stereo is once again playing softly - _Etta James, Delphine you pretentious piece of shit_ \- and it’s nothing anyone in this room would listen to; the garish colour of red and blue and the glint of streetlight off Cosima’s nose ring, the black studs and eyeliner on Felix, your crumpled suit that is really starting to smell and your dirty black boots, mud staining into the smooth hardwood from your trek through the corn for a smoke. None of it sits. None of it is right. 

‘What do you want?’ Tentative, though nothing about you typically is, and gently prying, to break the awkward silence that’s settled. Cosima clears her throat - manages to keep it from turning into a cough, thank God - and rummages around in her satchel for a lump of files and pictures and a harddrive emblazoned with DYAD. A laptop is hidden in there too, you notice. 

‘You don’t know who Sarah is, but she got a call - we know who you are, what you’re doing here. Marion, well, she’s pretty shady, but she said you were one of the good guys and, to be honest, dude, we could really use your help.’ 

 _Remember this moment with me, Jacq_ , Delphine says and takes your hand. _Remember it as the moment we became greater than the sum of our parts_. Staring into the wide open and hopeful face of Cosima Niehaus, you know you’re not going anywhere, the exact same stuck-in-the-mud feeling you had when you stood outside of an old church, an old school, confirmation gown in hand and your best friend’s in the other and thought _this is my life now_ rising up from your toes _._ Well, this is your life now. 

And there is no going back.  


	4. A Little Fable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another fic I thought I had finished and found fresh inspiration for!

Toronto is never quiet. Neither is Paris, you suppose, though there was at least a dimming in activity, where the city was still bright and thriving, but less a beating heart. This place has a constant pulse; a never-ending thrum, low bass and chest rattling, police sirens screaming past the window. Your attention is drawn by a couple of homeless men working themselves into a drunken argument. Civilisation is uncouth and violent – a totem pole where each person learns only how to climb above by stepping on the shoulders of the man below – and in the darkness of a dead woman’s apartment, melancholic music filling the space, it becomes strikingly clear. DYAD, clones, the dead and dying: you aren’t cut out for this kind of heavy.

“Everything okay?” Cosima’s voice comes through over the soft music, the door shutting gently behind her. You suppress a flinch. Stub the cigarette burning down between your fingers out on a plate, uneaten cold toast and strawberry seeds, and leave the window to help Felix with the boxes laid out across his arms.

“ _Oui, bien_ ,” is your automatic answer. It seemed exceedingly pitiless to burden a dying woman with your morbidity. “You brought everything?”

Felix puckers his mouth, as if sucking on a particularly sour lemon, and tilts his head in your direction. “Everything we were willing to hand over to some random French bird, _yeah_. Marion might think you’re the dogs, but I don’t trust anyone who just rocks up out the blue.”

Annoyance flashes under your skin, in your heart, and it makes you sick for a moment; _just go home, Jacq, save yourself the damned trouble_ , bitterness negotiates. It is the easier course of action, and God knows you have always respected the path of least resistance, but you owe a debt now. You have intertwined yourself with these people and their hopes are slick against your veins, burrowed deep in your marrow as though it was always the case, as though your life was forever leading up to resolving the woman you knew with the woman they know. Rudeness, such as it is, can be forgiven. You shrug and light another cigarette, fully aware and uncaring of how it seems to be cloying to Cosima’s diaphragm.

“ _Comme tu dis_ ,” you reply congenially. As you say. There’s little time for protracted argument.

“Felix, can you give us a minute?” Cosima asks politely, must to the man’s consternation. You don’t miss his huff or the way he throws his hands up behind your back, the slight slam of the door when he proclaims he’ll be waiting in the car. You force out a wry smirk and start to unpack the boxes.

“Is he always like this?”

Cosima snorts, “Yeah. He’s just being protective.”

“As is his right. He cares a great deal for you and your sisters, I gather,” you reply. It’s pointless to state, but it needs to be acknowledged at least, by you most of all. You know how it feels to be at the edge of a spiral and understand without doubt there will be nothing to which you can anchor yourself if you want to keep control.

“It’s mutual. He’s a good guy.”

“Of that, I have no doubt, Ms. Niehaus.” Cosima flinches but you don’t take notice, embroiling yourself in crime scene photos and incident reports. Conflicting eye witness accounts. After a long moment, she still hasn’t moved or said anything further, so it forces your head up to find her inquisitive eyes. A scientist always. “I need time to look through all – this. If there is nothing else…?” She seems glued to the spot. Eyes flitting occasionally about the apartment as though replaying intense memories behind her eyes, something you don’t quite doubt.

“You said you knew Delphine. At boarding school,” she begins tentatively. You nod. “What was she like? I’ve got a hundred versions of her in my head and none of them match up to the next one. I guess I just – wanted to know if it’s always been a Rolodex of personalities, or if she was ever… Ever just _one person_.”

_Crois-tu en Dieu, Jacq?_

“I don’t think _anyone_ is just one person, Cosima.” It’s a diplomatic answer, one you know she is unsatisfied for, it’s vague and displacing responsibility from your own shoulders to someone else’s, to a shadow on the wall, onto a woman who cannot speak for herself any longer. Judging by the clothes in the closet there is nothing left of the person you knew, but how to tell a lover their grief is reserved for a desolate land?

“Is that a no?” she asks, an eyebrow raised. No bullshit.

You shrug. Feet planted, face twisted in pain. “We are not the people we once were. What good does dwelling do?”

“Aren’t you _at all_ curious?” she huffs.

Tossing the file in your hand on the counter, your arms cross and you plant yourself like a tree at the centre of the kitchen. “Not naturally, _no_.”

“I met someone sweet and kind and authentic, then she disappeared to Germany and came back as this—this… _antiseptic_ robot and suddenly, I didn’t have a goddamn leg to stand on. Don’t screw me with this shit, man, my ticket’s been punched and I’m running out of time.” Fire burns in dull eyes. However, impassioned as it might be, her speech does not spur a spilling of your secrets and you sigh, long and loudly, frustration swelling through.

“Alas,’ said the mouse, ‘the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide that I ran along and was happy to see walls appearing to my right and left, but these high walls converged so quickly that I’m already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run.’” You hesitate, meeting her eyes plainly. “’But you’ve only got to run the other way,’ said the cat, and ate it up.” Cosima appears unimpressed. “Kafka. We all wind up in corners without a door to escape through and sometimes, in order to survive, we force ourselves into becoming the cat."

Cosima is deeply unsatisfied by your answer but she does not push for further information, instead accepting it as a temporary setback, and leaves with a quiet, small wave; a sigh of relief escapes you as soon as she is on the other side of the door.


End file.
